Although I was only eight years old, I remember the Cuban Missile Crisis
in 1962. I remember the worried looks of my teachers; my grandparents
watching the evening news with rising concern. And I remember the
palpable relief when it was over.

Then there was Watergate. The break-in took place in June, 1972. The
Senate hearings started in May of 1973, and from that point on it was
like being hooked on a badly-written soap opera starring people you
didn't like. Relief didn't come until the following August, when Nixon
resigned to avoid impeachment. It didn't really end until September,
when President Gerald Ford pardoned Nixon, an act that probably cost him
the 1976 election to Jimmy Carter. But by eliminating the possibility of
criminal action against the disgraced President, and the media circus
that would have surrounded it, Ford's action truly ended "our long
national nightmare."

The situation with Trump is worse. You're afraid to turn on the news in
the morning in the event he's tweeted us into a nuclear confrontation
somewhere. And this whole Michael Flynn business would be funny if it
didn't underscore the monumental stupidity of Trump and his minions.
You're the National Security Advisor, and you didn't stop to think your
intelligence agencies might be monitoring the phones of the Russians
you're calling? There are recordings, transcripts. No wonder some
agencies are withholding information from Trump. And while our attention
is distracted by this flaming gasbag's antics, the Republicans in
Congress have gone full-tilt bozo, passing laws defunding vital
services, removing restrictions prohibiting the mentally ill from buying
firearms, revoking environmental protections... I remember in the middle
of the Cuban missile crisis my grandfather turning to my grandmother and
soberly announcing, "This shit has to stop."

Indeed. I think it's a foregone conclusion that Trump is going to be
benched at some point, either by impeachment or a masterly invocation of
the 25th Amendment that Constitutional scholars will debate for decades.

Whatever. Just do it as quickly as you can. Mike Pence is ideologically
scarier the Trump, but at least shares the same reality as most of the
world.